


A Berating from a Bat

by silverlysilence



Category: Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Kryptonians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 14:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17205248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverlysilence/pseuds/silverlysilence
Summary: Clark had a bad day.  Scratch that.  Clark had a good day, right up until Batman called him asking for help.  He should have known his evening plans would be ruined when he took the call.  Why had he taken the call?  Oh, right, he was Superman.





	A Berating from a Bat

# A Berating from a Bat

Clark Kent slowly ascended the never-ending stairwell at a pace which was sedated even by human standards. He wasn’t in the mood to take the elevator and risk running into any of the other tenants. Logically, he knew there the likelihood of him coming across one of his neighbors was marginal, if not nonexistent. The majority of the building’s residence were part of the working class and they were no doubtably asleep at this time of night. However, Clark wasn’t chancing it, not with the luck he had of late.

He had been looking forward to this night for weeks now. Had everything planned out in advance, and even gotten out of the _Planet_ early – a feat in and out of itself – which was when the call came in. The commlink programmed to broadcast at a frequency only Kryptonians, along with a few others with enhanced hearing capabilities, chirped to life. Clark should have just ignored it.

He couldn’t.

It wasn’t in his nature to turn away from a crisis and when he heard Batman on the other end of the line actually requesting his help in Gotham, Superman wouldn’t say no. Not when the cap-crusader usually growled at him to get out of _his city_ and refused to ask for assistance on a regular basis even when he needed it. So, when Batman demanded Superman’s presence in Gotham to take down Toyman, he found himself agreeing.

Clark really should have known then and there his luck had changed. Batman actually asking – well demanding – Superman’s support was not normal. The lack of arguing with each other stranger still. He should have been prepared for everything to deteriorate. The heated scolding and berating remarks coming from the Bat after Toyman was in GPD’s custody shouldn’t have come as a surprise; but they did.

Even now, as he exited the stairwell into a dimly lit hallway, he could hear every word echoing in his head.

 _“You’re a menace. You don’t think things through. Relying on your superpowers more than your brain. You’re going to get someone seriously hurt or_ killed _just because you’re showing off. Letting them shoot at you. One of those bullets could ricocheted into a passerby because you don’t feel the need to catch them since your invulnerability.”_

Clark had wanted to yell right back, to call Batman out. For some unfathomable reason, he held back. If the _World’s Greatest Detective_ didn’t notice how ever single ricochet had embedded themselves in solid brick walls, then Superman wasn’t about to correct him. Did Batman even realize how much effort he put into analyzing and accurately predicting the trajectories of each bullet fired from multiple automatics from various positions while discretely repositioning his body to insure the ricochets wound up in walls and not flesh or bone?

He wasn’t doing it to show off. Sure, his invulnerability gave him the capacity to employ the maneuver, but it was more of a powerplay and a scare tactic more than anything. Who wouldn’t be afraid of the person to whom they just emptied a whole magazine’s worth of bullets into and from an automatic no less, only for it not to even phase them? If he would have caught the bullets himself – which he did discretely as possible when there was no way to safely redirect them – it would destroy the whole psychological effect his scare tactics triggered. Not to mention it give his opponents’ the upper hand when they realized he was protecting innocent bystanders who’d become potential hostages in their altercation.

 _“You, who look down upon us from your crystal palace, only gracing us with your presence when you see fit. Don’t think I didn’t hear the disinclination in your voice when you agreed to_ help _with the case. Too busy looking down on us from up in the sky, you don’t know what’s it like here on the ground.”_

Superman had floated just a little higher above the roof top at the time, just to spite the Bat. Other than that, he had kept his arms crossed over his house’s sigil and wore an emotionless blank look on his face. Now though, Clark didn’t hold back the scowl as he jammed his key into the lock and open the door with a little more force than he meant to.

His apartment was just how he left it, messy and dark. The only light from inside came from the kitchen stove clock which flashed 12:32 A.M. and the blinking light from his landline’s answering machine sitting on the end table by the door. Pressing the play button, the weary brunet listened to the message as he closed and locked the door, cutting off the light from the hall and plunging him into darkness.

“Hey Smallville, thanks for the last-minute tickets to the ballgame. I don’t know how you scored tickets to the game of the decade and I really don’t care who you had to bribe for the seats. We had a great time by the by, I ended up taking Richard with the extra ticket and we really hit it off. But let’s keep that between us for now, kay? There’s no need to tell Perry about his son and his star reporter going out together. We won by the way. I hope you had a good time at wherever you had to run off to. Thanks again for the tickets.”

As Lois’s message play, Clark made his way through the area and into the kitchen. Loosening his tie and undoing the buttons on his shirt with one hand as he opened the frig and looked through the sparse contents with his other hand. Hearing the last bit of his partner’s rambling had the brunet snorting. Yeah, like he had a _real_ good time tonight after abandoning his plans made _weeks_ in advance. He just couldn’t find it in himself to fault Lois for having a good time when he couldn’t.

Settling on the milk, Clark downed the whole cartoon before closing the frig and tossing the now empty plastic container into the recycle. As he headed to the bathroom to wash away the smell of explosives and smoke courtesy of Toyman’s volatile dolls, another part of Batman’s rant unbiddenly floated through his mind.

_“You don’t even fight, just smash things with your fist, destroying property and people’s livelihoods. You’re a sledgehammer attempting to hammer small nail into the wall, you’ll only break the wall, creating more work for everyone else to clean up.”_

It wasn’t like he didn’t know or realize how much damage he caused in fights. He always felt guilty afterwards despite knowing he tried his best to keep away from the populated areas and prevent as much damage as possible. Villains didn’t go out in the middle of nowhere to make a big scene, they started fights in the big cities and around as many people as possible to create as much fear and confusion to meet their ends.

Yes, buildings were damaged in the ensuing battles and even demolished. Moreover, the majority of the properties Superman purposely used to corral his opponents into, ensuring their destruction belonged to Lex Luthor in some capacity, which Clark didn’t feel bad about at all. Luthor was the mastermind behind most of the attacks to begin with and he should pay for it somehow. If not with prison time, then through monetary means. Not to mention, it would usually put a damper on the man’s next scheme with his attention occupied on rebuilding.

Clark would have enjoyed getting into a sparing ring with Batman just to show the man he could do finesse, that he did know some martial arts despite popular belief. A couple of styles in fact, but the reason he didn’t use them was they were Kryptonian fighting styles created by Krypton’s Military Guild. A xenophobic Guild which saw compassion as a weakness and used the techniques under a red star to dispatch undesirables. Clark really wasn’t about to use such techniques on humans under a yellow sun.

To think, all of this came from an offhanded comment by Superman regarding the newest Robin. He just suggested to spend some time with the boy outside of crime fighting and what he got was a biting, bitter, berating by the Bat.

" _Who are you to tell me how to raise my so-idekick? You don't know what it's like to be human. You weren’t raised as a human. You’re not human,_ Kal-EL of Krypton _, don't tell me how to do my job, just get out of my city and go back to your Fortress of_ Solitude _._ "

He knew Batman was under a lot of stress. Three of the warehouses at the docks had gone up during their battle – all of them belonged to a subsidiary of LexCorp hence why Superman hadn’t done more to put an end to the fires – add to that Toyman escaped from the Bat when Robin was almost skewered by a windup solider and anybody would be stressed. Superman had thankfully managed to catch the fleeing man. By the time he returned to the two vigilantes, Robin was swinging away and the Bat was scowling. Still, it didn’t mean he had to take it out on Superman.

Sighing, Clark pulled on his night clothes and fell onto his bed. Not even bothering to get under the covers, he let sleep claim him in hopes that when the sun rose the next morning, his luck might change. He had almost reached the land of dreams when he was pulled back to partial awareness by the mattress dipping and warm flesh pressing against his own.

“How was the midnight showing?”

“We didn’t stay,” grunting, Clark shifted in place to prevent rolling over onto a stray body limb. Once on his back, a single eye opened and gave the two icy blue orbs laying on the pillow next to him an unimpressed look. When full lips drew upwards and a deceptively delicate hand twirled a lock of golden blonde hair around her finger, the brunet let out a sigh and opened both eyes knowing he wasn’t going to go back to sleep right away.

“Kara, why did you leave the premiere of _The Grey Ghost_ reboot?” the brunet tiredly asked Kara Zor-El.

“Do you really have to ask?” an identical image of Kara propped herself up on an elbow to look over her counterpart and at Clark.

“Kala,” the weary brunet addressed the Kara Zor-El – going by Kala to keep the confusion at bay – from an alternate reality, “all of you have been looking forward to this night for weeks.”

“Sure, but it didn’t feel right watching the reboot without you. You got us hooked on the dorky original show from your childhood,” the reply this time came from his other side where a younger, near identical replica of himself sprawled out, limbs all over the place. Kon-El, or more commonly known by his human name Conner, the sole surviving hybrid clone of Superman and Lex Luthor created by the latter as a weapon only to end up adopted into the former’s family.

“It wouldn’t be much of a family night without you there and we weren’t about to carry Jon and Chris home by ourselves.” Clark looked down at the two tiny bodies curled up on his chest, already fast asleep despite having assure him they could stay up long enough to watch a midnight showing.

“Besides,” Kala said as she shifted around to wrench the covers out from underneath them all to pull over them, “we wouldn’t want you to get lonely at the ‘Fortress of _Solitude._ ’”

“You were eavesdropping. Shoulfa known,” Clark snorted tiredly, mentally shaking his head at himself for not figuring it out sooner. Despite Batman’s belief if there was one thing the Fortress of Solitude was lacking, it – like his Metropolis apartment and Kent Farm in Smallville or any place he called home – was _solitude_. There was never any privacy at any of the Kent-El households, but that meant there was never any loneliness either.

“Maybe just a little, but only us. The boys haven’t quite developed their hearing yet,” Kara mumbled sleepily, curling up into Clark’s side.

“Hey! You said you wouldn’t tell him that,” Kon grumbled through a yawn, patting the side of the bed which was all the invitation Krypto needed to jump up onto the bed and curled up at their feet. Not to be outdone, Streaky jumped up onto the bed to and curled on top of the white dog.

“Not our fault your Kryptonian side is slow to develop,” Kala teased despite being on the verge of sleep herself.

“Alright, alright. No fighting, go to sleep we’ll talk about this in the morning,” Clark curbed the impending fight. He was met with half mumbled replies as they were lured to sleep by the symphony of Kryptonian heartbeats beating to an ethereal melody. Clark was the last to drift off – Batman’s earlier ranting forgotten give the utter misconception he had of Superman – surrounded by his family.

**Author's Note:**

> So, my computer is going off for repair and I was making sure I had all my files backed up when I found this little one-shot lurking on my hard drive. I vaguely remember writing said fic when my dad was in the hospital, so it felt a little wonky to me, but I said screw it and posted it anyways. I think my mind latched on to the lack of El family fics out there and tried to write one to keep my brain occupied. Tell me what you think.


End file.
